8 essential tools and software your business needs to run efficiently
There are many tools and software to help businesses keep track of their tasks and achieve a more efficient workflow and processes in this digital age. Below are the essential ones that can take out some of the stress of running your business.
1. Mobile marketing tools
You may wonder why mobile marketing is at the top of this list. It’s due to the fact that the use of mobile phones will continue to rise in popularity in the coming years. Technological advancements have, indeed, allowed businesses to reach prospects even if they don’t physically visit the stores. The increased connectivity offered by smartphones plays a significant role in it.
In 2018, mobile phones made up 52.2% of web traffic worldwide. It was a hugely significant jump from 16.2% in 2013. Today, the average person spends five hours and above every day on their mobile phones, according to Blue Corona.
The statistics above only means one thing–you can reach your potential customers best through mobile marketing. To enable you to actually utilize the three ways (in-app messages, push notifications, and even SMS) of sending messages to potential buyers, you need special tools for mobile marketing. A good example of software you can use is one coming from a reliable 800 service. Getting a toll-free number often comes with additional features, like business text messaging, which allows you to send and receive SMS messages and instantly connect with customers.
2. Communication and collaboration software
As your business grows, keeping track of conversations among your employees starts to become difficult. Using a communication tool, such as Slack, chat and sharing of files among your team members can be in a single platform. It, of course, will make it easier for business owners like you to monitor everything. The good thing about communication tools is that you can often integrate them with other apps for collaboration to become more efficient.
3. Project management software
Everyone in a small business environment is doing a little bit of everything. Sending out assignments and deadlines, staying up-to-date on tasks of employees, and reviewing completed assignments become streamlined with a robust tool for project management. Examples of tools you can use include Monday, Trello, and Asana.
4. Customer relationship management software
Poor customer relationship management, too, often leads to forgotten or lost leads. It even turns your repeat customers into ghosts. That being said, there’s no reason to keep operating the customer relationships of your business on the fly.
CRM software, such as HubSpot, can help your business to not only stay top-of-mind with your customers, but also stay organized internally.
CRM or customer relationship management software allows you to actually log and track each aspect of every customer relationship you build. It lets you know which users are filling out forms after visiting your website but not closing any deal on a purchase. A CRM tool also enables business owners like you to know how long actually it’s been since the last time you’ve followed up with your loyal customers.
5. Social media management tools
Your business should definitely have a social media presence. If you want to save yourself some valuable time, especially in running your different social media accounts, you need to make use of a tool for management and scheduling. These platforms won’t only help you in keeping track of your different social media accounts all in one place, but will also provide you with useful analytics data about every engagement your followers have with your posts. Examples of social media management tools you can try are Sprout Social, Buffer, and Hootsuite.
6. Website performance monitoring software
Businesses have to adjust and influence consumers to make different decisions. One way of effectively doing it is knowing how people actually are using or not using your website. It holds no matter how you’ve built your business website. To track what pages users are clicking on, see if visitors are immediately leaving or bouncing. And, to look into other necessary data your business can mine to increase its performance, you need to try tools, like Google Analytics and Chartbeat.
7. Video conferencing software
A program for video conferencing easily connects you face-to-face with customers, vendors, and your team for more productive meetings. As you probably already know, it’s likely in this age of remote work that your employees aren’t in the same space anymore. Zoom, Skype, Cisco, and ClickMeeting are examples of software that can bridge the gap.
8. File storage software
With remote workers and freelancers becoming the future of work, it’s now essential that all the important documents of your company are stored in the cloud, off-site, and this is true from project files to the articles of incorporation. To grant access to any users from different locations and to safeguard your backups, you have to get Dropbox or Google Drive. These programs also make it possible for authorized users to update important files even on the fly.
Conclusion
Businesses now recognize the importance of technology in their quest for success. They no longer shun it. Aside from the ones discussed above, time tracker software, like Time Doctor and Toggl, as well as accounting software, like Xero and QuickBooks, are also honorable mentions for the essential tools and software your business needs for it to run efficiently.
